Construction and Project Management
A project is by its nature an unique series of interconnected activities with a definable purpose or end product. Generally considered as complex, they usually require the involvement of multiple skills/professions/disciplines. Therefore, they frequently involve different entities within an organisation, and more often from different organisations to act in unison with each other, in circumstances where the line of authority is hierarchical (vertical) and the required interaction is stratified (horizontal). This structure dictating that conflict and stress is endemic, and calls for unique management procedures.
As the name suggests, Project Management is the process of applying management skills to a project. The management techniques employed, although akin to classical management of continuing stable processes, must be peculiar to the needs of the individual project, all of which are dynamic in nature. Since the project has a finite life (ie it has a beginning and an end), the infrastructure required to carry it out is temporary in nature—indeed one could consider the effective Project Management team to be efficiently working itself out of a job.
The successful completion of Project Management requires the transformation of the Project from conception, through the various stages of its life cycle, to satisfactory completion. This must be achieved within the constraints of time, cost, quality, and performance, which are set at the outset. By the unique nature of each Project, consequently each has aspects that have not previously been done, or done in the particular manner or order, thus requiring an iterative process to achieve optimisation. Constrains and goals for the Project, along with other aspects, may be readjusted and fine tuned during the project's various life cycle phases, always with aim to holistic betterment and based on value assessment.
The Project Manager, being the focal point of the management process, is responsible for the success of the Project. To achieve this outcome, it is necessary for the Project Manager to integrate people of different skills and disciplines into a cohesive Project Team, with the common vision of satisfactory (and satisfying) completion of the Project. This, he/she needs to do usually without the necessary authority to enforce his/her will upon the participants (contracts for employment and engagement are rarely between the Project Management and the operative entities). Ergo, the Project Manager must rely on leadership, charisma, communication and negotiating skills to influence the desired conclusion. He/she may have physical (though as described above rarely legal) control over money, which sometimes is a convincing means of persuasion (imperative to exercise caution in this regard).
Should all reasonable means fail, and it is deemed necessary to proceed with arbitration or litigation, the proceedings will be between the contracting parties, which as alluded to earlier retrogresses the Project Manager to the capacity of Expert Witness or Adviser. These procedures are expensive and time consuming, so it behoves the Project Manager to put every effort into the practice of effective communication/negotiation.
When we speak of life cycle in this context, we are not referring to the longevity of the finished product, but rather the stages of progress through which the management process aimed at producing that article is directed. These phases of the life cycle comprising conception, definition, acquisition, and operating, each having its own subset, whilst others have dissected the cycle into six or more phases. This apparent discrepancy is not significant when, on closer inspection of each hypothesis and their subsections, it is apparent that each proposal encompasses very similar concepts, the differences being largely in the partitioning and semantics rather than content. Some life cycle models also include operation and decommissioning phases, an aspect with which this author concurs, however it depends on the definition and scope of the Project, and the commission of the Project Manager, whether these phases are relevant. For this exercise, since the objective is to discuss the Project Management to documentation, without proceeding to implementation, we can adopt the Nicholas model shown as figure 1. The report will discuss Project Management for phases A, B, and the design (documentation) stage of phase C.
Figure 1: System (Project) Life Cycle Model
It will be noticed that the life cycle model returns to phase A from Phase D, this is to indicate that at the end of the useful life of the system (here the product of the Project Management operation), it is decommissioned and a replacement developed. Project Management is defined to encompass only some aspects of the life cycle of the product. Thus a project’s life cycle would not return to phase A, but rather terminate after satisfying its charter with a completion phase. As time progresses from phase A to phase D, so does the project develop from the abstract to the concrete (ie from a mere idea to an functional system or completed project). Project Management is of coarse not limited in application to construction, but rather is well suited to the instigation of any complex physical system.
Differing from the preceding Project Management method, traditional construction method incorporating design‑bid‑construct in sequence is diagrammatically shown in figure 2.
Figure 2: Traditional Construction Sequence Model
In any method of bringing a Project from concept to completion, there is a relationship between the stage of development (passage of time) and the ability to make changes in scope and detail of the Project. At the very earliest concept stage there is permissible 100% flexibility to change, while at the hand over or completion stage permissibly change is limited to such things as decor, furniture, demountable partitioning—the funnel. It is imperative to make any changes/modifications/improvements at the earliest stages through the process of communication and consultation between all participants—viz make alterations on paper/computer rather than to work completed or in progress.
Project Management (PM) as a practice has grown significantly in the later half of the twentieth century. Built largely around CPM and PERT, both methods being developed out of military projects in the 1950s, with more or less emphasis on human relationships depending on the inclination of the project manager. Since the development, project management and the available tools have improved gradually until the mid 1980s, when achievement in automation began their rapid expansion.
The last 30 years has witnessed the change in PM aids from slide rules, adding machines and manual methods, to the introduction and evolution of the many computer packages for PC available today. Although some have been available on mainframe platforms for some time, with the rapid improvement in PC speed and power, as project managers we now adopt packages such as
Previously all such products were discrete unrelated packages, but are now well integrated, with linking under the Windows' environment allowing us to manage and update projects in real time, providing up to date control and reporting.
